Testing the continuum: user-generated cultural heritage on YouTube

Leisa Gibbons Testing the continuum: user-generated cultural heritage on Youtube

This paper is a draft. Please contact the author before quoting from this paper.

Introduction

The web 2.0 phenomenon has introduced new ways for internet users to interact

with online spaces and content. The online culture that web 2.0 has spawned is

inherently social, interactive and portable, where users create and share their own

and other people’s creations across online spaces. Cultural heritage institutions have

begun to collect the outputs of these social media interactions, adding them to fast-

growing and often massive collections of born-digital culture. However, the capture

and organisation of web 2.0 cultural production by institutions is actioned with

website archiving models of practice. These practices do not take into account the

complexity inherent in social media as continuously re-created cultural production.

Additionally, the familiarity and portability of web 2.0 forms, such as photographs and

moving image video, has meant that online culture has been collected as objects,

with value ascribed in subject and content. However, online cultural content is

manifestly more complex than current archival practices allow and requires a

conceptual shift in the approach to collection and re-presentation of recorded digital

culture.

This paper presents work from my PhD research into social media website, Youtube,

and the preliminary investigations undertaken to discover and understand the

complexities of online digital content. I have used a model of complexity, the

Cultural Heritage Continuum model (CHCm), which is one of the array of continuum

models developed by Frank Upward as a tool to explore the role of Youtube in

culture formation. In this paper I also introduce the use of the CHCm as a model to

conceptually explore and highlight assumptions and limitations of Australian

collecting institutions who have begun to collect content from Youtube as cultural

heritage.

This paper is split into four sections. In the first I will introduce and present the

CHCm as a tool for understanding culture formation.1 In the second the phenomenon

of Youtube is discussed referencing media and cultural theory literature. The third

section contains an investigation of how Youtube and Youtube videos are

conceptualised as evidence of culture. Finally, I introduce the larger context of my


PhD research concerned with personal recordkeeping and memory-making, ending

with a vision of how complexity of online digital cultural heritage can be realised in

personal cultural memories.

The Cultural Heritage Continuum model

For those acquainted with the Records Continuum model2, the model presented

below (Figure 1) will be somewhat familiar. The four rings represent the four

dimensions of action: create, capture, organise and pluralise. These actions mark

the places of transformation over time: from an initial idea created, to dissemination

and pluralisation to multiple communities.

Transformation takes place across the dimensions and within the structures of time-

space distanciation, narrative scale, cultural heritage containers and storytelling.

Each dimensional ‘layer’ of the continuum reveals how the structures impact on the

formation of that which is considered ‘heritage’.3

Heritage is defined as having value to group(s) and is generally something that is

preserved for successive generations, whether it is a story, artefact or site.4

UNESCO define cultural heritage, in general, as something which holds universal

Figure 1


value from the point of view of history, art, science, aesthetic, ethnological or

anthropological points of view.5 Concepts of value are reflected in the titles of the

structures of the CHCm, with each dimensional layer revealing how time and

interactions with groups of people contribute to how culture can be valued as

heritage.

Of interest to archivists will be the museum terminology used for containers of

cultural heritage axis. However, as Frank Upward explains, the term museum(s)

refers simply to a container, in a generic sense: a topological term for use, not for

literal use.6 The container is the cultural content, as well as that which contains it. For

example, an ‘old’ style film reel is both a container of cultural content (the story being

told by the moving images), as well as the container that holds it (physical film &

reel). The implications (and complications) of the terminology in the CHCm highlight

issues on how to understand what a container of digital cultural heritage might

actually be, especially when digital cultural production is merely structured data.

As my research progresses, I estimate that the practical and conceptual application

of what is understood as cultural heritage containers will reveal more challenges for

capture and organisation of online digital cultural content. I have called these

challenges, ‘eddies in the spacetime continuum’, a concept borrowed from Douglas

Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.7 ‘Eddies’ are a variance in the continuum, a

space of unclear understandings which appear to work at odds with the current, but

also exist within it. It is entirely feasible to say that the impact of digital technologies

has been producing ‘eddies’ on archival principles throughout the last few decades.

In this paper, the focus of the CHCm has been narrowed to the axes of story-telling

and narrative. What stories are being told in the way that digital media from Youtube

is captured and organised (second and third dimensions) by cultural heritage

institutions and how do these practices re-create cultural heritage (first and fourth

dimensions)? What conceptual narratives are constructed in relation to online digital

culture? What underlying principles and models of practice does the model reveal?

What is Youtube?


Youtube is a website that entertains people with videos uploaded by users. Anyone

with access to the internet can watch Youtube videos. Youtube, the corporate entity,

promotes the website as a space for broadcasting, focussing on the ability to share

video across the internet on other websites, mobile devices, blogs and email.8

Regardless of personal opinion about the value of Youtube content and the quality or

legality of its videos, it is undeniable that Youtube has been absorbed into the

vernacular and is a part of contemporary culture.

What makes Youtube part of the web 2.0 phenomenon is that Youtube does not

create the video, the users do. The video clips on Youtube are created by users and

shared throughout online spaces by users, and on the Youtube website itself, other

users can comment on video, mark it as a favourite, put it in a playlist or produce a

video in response. These activities are called ‘user generated content’ or UGC, as

well as participatory culture or consumer co-creation.9 The carrier of participatory

culture online is also often referred to as ‘social media’. 10

The principles of participatory culture refer to ideas about the everyday person being

able to access media industry modes of communication. However, participatory

culture is not specific to Youtube, or even social media, but has its roots in the

subcultures and grass roots cultures that have been emerging into the mainstream

consciousness in the last few decades: activities such as underground or guerrilla

1 Frank Upward, 'Continuum Mechanics and Memory Banks [Series of Two Parts] Part 2: The Making of Culture', Archives and Manuscripts, 33 (2), 2005, p. 21.

2 Sue McKemmish, Michael Piggott, Barbara Reed, Frank Upward, Archives: Recordkeeping in Society, Centre

for Information Studies, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2005.

3 Frank Upward’s article in A&M 33 (2) describes the reasoning behind the choice of terminology and concepts of the CHCm.

4 The Macquarie Dictionary Online, 2009, Macquarie Dictionary Publishers Pty Ltd: ‘heritage’.

5 <http://whc.unesco.org/archive/gloss96.htm>

6 Frank Upward, p. 21

7 Douglas Adams, Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy: A trilogy in four parts, Pan Book, London, 1992, p. 321

8 <www.youtube.com>

9 Henry Jenkins, Ravi Purushotma, Katherine Clinton, Margaret Weigel and Alice J. Robinson, ‘Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century’, White Paper. MacArthur Foundation, 2006. <http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF>

10 Check the nexus of participatory culture for the vernacular (and working) definition of ‘social media’: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media#cite_note-trends.google.com-0>


film production, zines, folk opera, and graffiti art.11 This is ‘do it yourself’ and ‘do it

with others’ culture, allowing small stories, from individuals and groups, to be part of

a larger and pluralist world of communication.12

Youtube is a space for the amateur13 plus the high end commercial company as well

as any non-profit, governmental or educational organisation.14 In this sense Youtube

is a facilitating tool for individuals and communities to participate in the production of

culture where the content is published in the same space as any other participant.15

With this kind of accessibility and tools provided in the website for user participation,

Youtube could be considered a ‘continuum machine’.

Youtube as Continuum Machine

Youtube is a space for videos which contribute to the small stories and the tales of

the everyday which are found at the centre of the CHCm; the create dimension.

Research has shown that the content of the videos influence social interaction

between people and establishing greater social networks on Youtube.16 The story is

in the content of the moving images, as well as within the interactions in the social

media.

11 Henry Jenkins, ‘What happened before Youtube?’, Confessions of an Aca-Fan: the official weblog of Henry Jenkins, 2008 <http://henryjenkins.org/2008/06/what_happened_before_youtube.html>

12 Jean Burgess & Joshua Green, YouTube: online video and participatory culture, Polity Press, Cambridge,

2009, p. 12

13 The concept of amateur is problematic, particularly as Youtube set up a system whereby popular channels could reap advertising revenue through what is called the “partner program”. <http://www.youtube.com/partners> This program is aimed at the users who were not originally commercial or uploaded by professional media companies. Some of the participants in the partner program are receiving more than a substantial income from this scheme, and therefore can be considered, professional, rather than amateur. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/media/11youtube.html?_r=1&em> Even previous to this, amateur became a style of video, rather than whether the person producing it was getting paid. Controversy about Lonleygirl15, who appeared one Youtube as regular, amateur-type vlogger in 2006, blew up later than same year when it was discovered that the Youtube videos were written and filmed by production by three filmmakers using a professional actress. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15> The new ‘amateur style’ video production is big business with advertising companies using the viral nature of Youtube video (easy sharing across the internet) to create marketing campaigns at the grass roots. This is the CHCm structures of legitimation of story and organisational warrant in narrative at work.

14 BBC has a massive presence on Youtube and with only highlights and clips for an international audience, a promotional presence? <http://www.youtube.com/user/BBCComedyGreats> Other high end commercial organisations are: EMI America Records, CBS News, Fox Searchlight.

15 Henry Jenkins, ‘Nine propositions toward a cultural theory of Youtube’, Confessions of an Aca-Fan: the official

weblog of Henry Jenkins, 2007 <http://henryjenkins.org/2007/05/9_propositions_towards_a_cultu.html>


The website provides tools to capture videos, so that they may be exhibited either in

a creator’s collection, or in other user’s playlists (second dimension). This interaction

tells a story of significance of both the communications technologies and the video

content itself. User stories and styles, such as video blogging or vlogging or amateur

style, become accepted within the Youtube community, as well as within wider

communities of culture. These types of videos and interactions become part of a new

way of sharing meaning.

Social interactions within the website are performed in text, such as descriptions,

annotations of videos and comments left by viewers, as well as through hyperlinks to

other videos. Youtube provides the tools for these actions to be performed by users,

as well as adds content themselves, creating linkages to similar videos. In addition,

social interaction is supported by tools to create and manage a profile, generate

playlists and establish networks of supporters, either as friends or channel

subscribers. Youtube users can use these facilitating tools to create and organise

their work and that of others to construct an identity and establish themselves in a

community (third dimension).

These Youtube interactions legitimise the story-telling media across wider groups

online. The tools and social interactions also allow any registered user the ability to

be a curator and assess the value of content, regardless of whether its origin is

commercial or amateur and re-present it for other consumers. The traces of other

people’s creations, whether video, text, playlists, feed back into the ongoing

generation of videos in response to other videos, different collections of video and

mash ups of videos, establishing a continuous vernacular participation in culture

formation.17 New stories and new spaces of meaning are created within the Youtube

website, as well as across the internet wherever Youtube videos are found.

This situates the Youtube website within the realm of the fourth dimension where

mediated communications and connections tell a tale of Youtube as social agent: the

16 Burgess & Green;

Patricia Lange, Publically private and privately public: Social networking on Youtube, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 2007, 13(1), pp.361-380

John C. Paolillo, Structure and network in the Youtube core. Paper presented at the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2008

17 Henry Jenkins, 2007


driver of social interaction and cultural production. Youtube dominates the world of

online video, as well as has established itself in the vernacular: Youtube and

Youtube videos are not just a website, but a phenomenon. The meta-narrative is that

of online social communities and how mediated communications can create both

offline and online friendships and social networks with varying degrees of intimacy.18

The small stories inherent in these interactions contribute to the creation of

individual, community and social narratives within Youtube.

There are some interesting concepts being used by cultural and media researcher’s

world in relation to Youtube, in particular, the term, ‘mediated memories’. Mediated

memories refers to a concept wherein the products of using digital technologies,

such as a video, or a Youtube channel page, mediate relationships between

individuals and groups of any kind, such as family, community or society.19 Mediated

memories have personal value, but collections of mediated memories can reflect a

sense of personal identity within a particular space and time.20 Mediated memory in

Youtube refers to relationships with technology and groups of people, as well as the

spaces of public and private the relationships occupy, raising questions about how

personal and public culture might contribute to evidence of culture.21

I have used the concept of mediated memories to conceptualise Youtube as an

information system that provides space for creation of memories through video,

online identity and the other tools Youtube, and the internet as network, provides.

Additionally, the interactions between a Youtube creator, the one who uploads video,

and the audience that watches it, plays a role in mediating memories: between self

and groups and between private and public.

This concept is played out in the analysis of Youtube as Continuum machine. In this

concept Youtube is a system of production, where production occurs in different

spaces within the website, as well as across networks. The CHCm reveals the

nature of the system and how it works by feeding into itself continuously.

18 Patrica Lange, Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 2007 <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/lange.html>

19 Jose van Dijck, Mediated memories in the digital age. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2007, p.1

20 ibid

21 Ibid pg 2


Additionally, this concept looks towards cultural formation as a process not just

creations generated by individuals as private memory, but through interaction within

groups and communities as shared memory, which then situates the community as

producer of culture.

Cultural studies researchers Jean Burgess and Joshua Green have categorised

Youtube into four roles: high-volume website, broadcast platform, media archive and

social network.22 These four roles encompass concepts of Youtube as a social

technology, as well as a service to disseminate content and provide distribution to

audiences. Of interest to archivists is that Burgess & Green refer to Youtube as an

archive, implying that Google, Youtube’s owner, has developed it as such. However,

Google, the corporate entity, is not active in preserving the videos or the website

itself for purposes other than commercial accessibility.23

Burgess and Green actually use the more specific term “public archive” for Youtube

because its users digitise, upload, describe, arrange and assign metadata (tags) to

videos and these activities are commonly associated with archival work.24 This

explanation points more towards a more vernacular understanding of archival

practice and may be one of the keys to a greater understanding of the ‘eddies’ in the

CHCm.

The following analysis of the practice of collection and organisation of Youtube

content by three Australian Cultural Heritage institutions reveals questions about the

nature of individual and community cultural production and how it is re-presented as

evidence of culture. The analysis references the CHCm as a framework to

investigate interactions along the story-telling and narrative axes. Burgess & Green’s

four descriptive roles of Youtube are also used in the analysis to provide a context of

Youtube in a particular cultural time and space.

Youtube videos in cultural heritage collections

The three institutions chosen are:

22 Burgess and Green, p.5

23 Frank Kessler, and Mirko Tobias Schäfer, quoting Leo Enticknap, Navigating Youtube: Constituting a hybrid

information management system. The Youtube Reader. (eds) Pelle Snickars & Patrick Vonderau. National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, 2009, p.275

24 Burgess and Green, p.88


The National Library’s (NLA) PANDORA archive collects and provides long-

term access to selected online publications and web sites which have

significant associations with Australia.25 The NLA captured and organised

online videos and other web 2.0 websites created as a result of the 2007

federal election into PANDORA as part of a larger website collection on

Australian politics.

The State Library of Tasmania’s, “Our Digital Island” web archive selects and

preserves online digital content that has been created and placed on the web

in Tasmania.26 Unlike the NLA, the State Library of Tasmania (SLT) has

legislation governing legal deposit of digital records which allows them more

freedom in being able to select and preserve digital material.27 The SLT

captured and organised various digital material, including extensive video files

from Youtube, to contribute to a collection about the Hobart Myer building

burning, an event that occurred on September 22, 2007.

The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) are partners in the PANDORA

project and select and capture examples of websites, netcasting in radio and

television, audio files, video files, streaming audio and video, and other

emergent media technologies from the internet as part of their New Media

Project.28 The NFSA does not have a legal deposit mandate and supports

their own selection by engaging the public and cultural producers to contact

them with ideas for submission. The National Film and Sound Archive

selected, captured and organised a video created and uploaded to Youtube in

2007 about a group of dancers, called the Chooky dancers, performing at a

Festival in the Northern Territory to a soundtrack out of Zorba the Greek.

Figure 2 below is a screen shot of PANDORA’s listings of online material collected

under the heading ‘Election Campaigns’. The organisation of the collection is based

on subject within a hierarchical structure: Politics—Election Campaigns—Federal

Election 2007. This organisational structure provides a model which can be used to

25 <http://pandora.nla.gov.au/overview.html>

26 <http://odi.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/>

27 <http://www.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/collections/tasres/heritageservices/legaldeposit>

28 < http://www.nfsa.gov.au/the_collection/categories/new_media.html>


compare similar collections over time – see the Federal Election 2004 subject groups

at the top of figure 2. The particular focus for this analysis is the ‘media, comment

and video websites’ collection.

Figure 2

The NLA captured and organised online videos and other web 2.0 websites of the

2007 federal election because it was understood that that election was the first

political campaign in which the internet played a significant role in communications

between political entities and the public.29 The NLA’s acknowledgement and use of

Youtube videos created as part of a political campaign establishes Youtube as

broadcast platform and legitimate storytelling device.30

Situating Youtube as commentary and communications tool establishes social media

as a broadcast platform which has group acceptance both within online communities

as well as offline and what could be called, ‘traditional’ communications – such as

29 Edgar Crook, The 2007 Australian federal election on the internet, Staff Paper, National Library of Australia,

Canberra, 2007, p. 2 <http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2007/documents/Election2007.pdf>

30 Crook, p.5


commercial TV – establishing the legitimate role of the media tool itself and the

Youtube website as a place of activity.

The NLA’s approach to archiving video was to download them and then re-position

them into the captured websites in order to make it function as it would have been

originally viewed.31 Google Australia’s Youtube channel was captured as part of this

record, a website which contained over 700 videos which were found within the

political party sites linked via the site.32 However, this approach was not taken with

all websites, with some not having any video embedded, but others, such as the

videos produced by Red Symons, were captured as video only, to be accessed

as .mpg’s from the Pandora archive record.33

The creation of website as heritage container acknowledges the role of the Youtube

website as place of activity. The NLA seeks to capture and organise the information

the webpages contain, both visually and textually, as exhibit item. The practice of

taking multiple snapshots of the website provides a story of the website as it moves

through ‘time’. Additionally, the practice of capturing videos as separate entities

presumes the role of Youtube as media archive. The video and its content, along

with the subject association, (Red Symons in the above example) is captured and

organised as exhibit item or object.

In performing these activities the NLA establishes Youtube and its videos as having

a role to play in politics and it is the media and being online itself that is significant

which creates the function of Youtube’s small stories as having a part to play in a

larger narrative. By capturing the website and video the NLA also shows some

elements of the social networking role; however this context can be seen as

somewhat incidental to the purpose of collecting website with content.

Similar to the NLA, the SLT downloaded numerous videos from Youtube as part of a

digital collection on a particular historical event. However, the SLT approach was to

organisation the video as a collection of single files that can be opened, viewed or

saved in whatever local program is available.34 (Figure 3) The capture of multiples

31 Crook, p.3

32 ibid

33 <http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/80261/20080110-0858/www.freedomtodiffer.com/onlinepolitics/viral_videos/index.html; http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/79514>


under a collection title possibly implies that numerous stories are being told in the

content of the videos. The stories maybe of multiple voices, or multiple formats, or

physical position of the camera when taking the footage; however, the container of

culture is in the telling. The action of capturing multiples positions Youtube in this

collection as a broadcaster of stories told by many voices.

However, by capturing only the video, the video content is seen as containing the

only information that is useful to this collection. The video is then understood as

cultural object, or exhibit item, containing the most valuable and meaningful

information. This practice also identifies Youtube as a media archive which contains

cultural objects that can be selected, dis-embedded and re-embedded into other

cultural ‘archives’.

Additionally, by downloading numerous videos from Youtube and organising them

under the collective title, Collection of Youtube videos... the SLT, similar to the NLA,

establishes the significance of the website itself and the legitimate role it plays in

communicating stories.

34 ...and sometimes not, with some videos requiring a flash player to be installed.

Figure 3


In undertaking these practices the SLT establishes Youtube’s role as a teller of

multiple stories within the wider narrative of online storytellers. The stories being told

are historical accounts putting Youtube’s users and videos as the storytellers of

community history and establishing Youtube users as creators of a community of

common voices.

The NFSA collects new media in various forms, which contributes to a rather

different type of collection than that of the two library web archives. A search for

Youtube in the NFSA catalogue resulted in a listing of clips from television news

reports about Youtube, two videos which were uploaded to Youtube, as well as a

documentary about one of those Youtube videos.

The catalogue entry I chose to investigate was a video created and uploaded to

Youtube in 2007 about a group of dancers, called the Chooky dancers, performing at

a festival in the Northern Territory to a soundtrack out of Zorba the Greek.

Figure 4


The catalogue entry of the Chooky dancers video (Figure 4) does not indicate where

this video was captured from: whether it was downloaded from Youtube or a copy of

the footage was donated by the video maker. The catalogue entry only indicates that

that the holding is in .wmv format, which is not the Youtube flash video (.flv) format.

The summary entry however reveals that this video does has a relationship with

Youtube, with the description notes taken from the Youtube website. This

establishes the website as a broadcasting platform, although not necessarily a

legitimate story-telling device, rather a space where stories of significance are told

and where popularity and group acceptance of the story-telling medium is

established.

The media category of the video is described as ‘film’, establishing this video as part

of the moving image genre, and situating this video into a longer and legitimate

story of audiovisual heritage and the moving image as story-telling form. This

categorisation as well as capture of a single video file, implies that the Chooky

dancer video can stand separate from the place in which it was originally created or

exhibited. In this sense, Youtube plays the role of media archive; however, not in the

same sense as in the Library examples. Without knowing exactly where this video

was captured from, the role Youtube plays as media archive is that of searchable

content library index wherein the website is a database, rather than a content

repository.

The documentary in the collection mentioned previously is about the Chooky

dancers and this particular Youtube video; however, the NFSA catalogue entries for

these two moving image productions are not linked. The documentary is organised

within a larger series of short films made by Indigenous Western Australian

Filmmakers. A possible reason why the Youtube video is separate is that there is no

professional production company assigned to the Youtube video, as can be seen in

the catalogue entry (Figure 4). The documentary catalogue entry, however (Figure 5)

does have a production credit.


Figure 5

This tells an interesting story of how this video and possibly other online content

might be situated within traditional constructions of legitimate moving image

production, particularly in Australia. It may be the amateur nature of the Youtube

video which sets it apart or the lack of Government funding, although this is

speculation, but the absence of a producer in the metadata implies that there is

another, larger story being told about this type of moving image production.

Finally, it is not entirely clear where the Chooky dancers Youtube video sits within

the NFSA narrative of ‘New Media’ as it has been captured and organised as if it

were any other ‘film’. Additionally, by choosing a title and term such as, ‘New Media

Collection’ which is found within a National Film and Sound Archive, implies that

there is something that is conceptualised as ‘old media’. The relationship between

new and old media is not clear, however, by including ‘New Media’ within the context

of a National Film and Sound Archive, it cements the notion that a relationship must

exist between different types of media that is also related to moving image and

sound.


Conclusions

Overall, the analysis revealed that current capture and organisation of Youtube

videos in these three cultural heritage collecting programs re-create Youtube

primarily as a website, broadcast platform and media archive. Representation of the

social media space from which the Youtube video was captured from was limited.

Using the structures of the CHCm as analytic tool, the predominant underlying

principles were revealed to be based on the capture of content relevant to subject.

This indicated that the premise of moving image found online is contained within the

story of the moving images, rather than the media itself. However, the capture and

organisation of online material into web archives, or new media content, indicated

that the media plays a critical role in why the video was captured in the first place.

Ultimately, the analysis indicated that Youtube videos are being conceptualised as

objects which can be removed from an online digital space and organised in a

heritage collection. Reasons for the capture and organisation of digital content as

objects are more than likely founded in the practices of collection, wherein cultural

heritage institutions select and organise according to a specific purpose. However,

other reasons may be more technical in nature; with ever increasing complexity of

online digital content the capture of website material is technically problematic.35

Within the wider PhD research project little information was found in archival

literature on moving image archiving in relation to born digital materials, let alone

online digital content. Additionally, there were only a few significant voices in the

moving image archiving field who thought it pertinent to point out that digital

technologies fundamentally change how moving image is understood, particularly

born digital moving image.36

The underlying principles in institutional practice do not take into account the

complexity of Youtube as a system of production of multiple voices, as was seen in

the Continuum machine analysis. But do they have to? The questions that need to

35 The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine tells a great tale of how website capturing technology has changed in effectiveness since it was started in the 1990s. The PROV guideline on technical issues for capturing web-generated records provides a good overview of the issues in capture. <http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/records/Web_Advice/PROVRMAdvice20b.pdf>


be asked of cultural heritage institutions are how Youtube, and other online social

media, contribute to cultural heritage as a media?

Does the capture of a website with embedded video provide evidence of what the

media does? What is the media when the video is shared in an email, or a blog

page? Who would be interested in such a collection and what would it look like? Is

the technology capable of creating such a collection and where would it be located?

In the last couple of years there have been efforts made to address the issues of the

multiple voices and private/public spaces of cultural production in social websites.

There are at least three models in the archival world which investigate, in some way,

the relationship between personal recordkeeping and the relationship with the

collective cultural memory of society. The first comes from two US web archivists,

Chirag Shah and Gary Marchionini, who have been researching Youtube and its

videos for the purpose of creating digital archives which contain relevant contextual

information.37 Shah and Marchionini have developed a model and a tool for capturing

context in online video to be able to give meaning to the videos collected from within

their own time and space.38

Shah and Marchionini model relies on the dual premise that information in digital

archives changes over time through use and interpretation and that digital access

provides tools for use, interaction, annotation and sharing of archival materials.39

36 There are a couple of issues that were raised when conducting a literature review, which was reflected also in

the analysis, conducted in this paper. Who collects online video? Is it web archivists or moving image archivists? Is online video the same as all other moving image? What relationships do media have to online video? Is all online video the same? What is different about Youtube video and the Youtube website? The significant voices in the literature and some of their work:

1. John F. Barber, Digital archiving and "the new screen”, [book chapter] in Transdisciplinary digital art. Sound, vision and the new screen, Springer, Berlin, 2008, pp. 110-119.

2. Howard Besser, Digital preservation of moving image material? In Moving Image, Fall, 2001. <http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Papers/amia-longevity.html>

3. Dylan Cave, "Born Digital"- Raised an Orphan?: Acquiring Digital Media through an Analog Paradigm. The Moving Image, 8(1), 1-13, 2008.

4. Karen F. Gracy, Moving Image Preservation and Cultural Capital, Library Trends, 2007, 56(1), pp. 183-197.

5. Rick Prelinger, Archives and Access in the 21st Century, Cinema Journal, 46(3), 2007, pp. 114-118.

37 Chirag Shah and Gary Marchionini, Preserving 2008 US Presidential Election Videos, International Web

Archiving Workshop, 2007, Vancouver.

38 ibid


They call these “temporal context” and “social context”, respectively and are used to

model an automated system for harvesting contextual information from the Youtube

site provided by both video creator and Youtube itself.40

The second is a model by Peter van Garderen, developed as part of his work on

access systems for archives using web 2.0 tools.41 This model incorporates personal

archives and recordkeeping practice and the integration between private and public

collections in order to realise the potential of collective memory in digital archives.42

The third model is found in the conceptual writing of moving image archivist Karen

Gracy. Gracy questions the “social order that sustains cultural institutions in their role

as the creators and sustainers of objectified cultural capital.”43 This model

acknowledges that archival and curatorial practices are being performed by web

users and is driven on democratic principles.44 Gracy refers to her model as, “the

democratic archive”, which will document and facilitate social discourse and

communities of interested individuals and organisations.45

Gracy’s overture, although not detailed, calls for linkages between curators, both

professional and amateur and the spaces where moving image resides in archives,

museums and in user-generated spaces such as Youtube.46 Gracy’s model is a

continuum machine and in it, social records will be documented, but also will be

continuously created and re-created through social discourse and communities of

interested individuals and organisations.47

39 Shah and Marchionini, p. 1

40 Shah and Marchionini, p. 3-4

41 <http://archivemati.ca/wp-content/shockwave-flash/SAA2006.html>

42 ibid

43 Gracy, p.183

44 ibid

45 Gracy, p. 187

46 Gracy, p.184

47 Gracy, p.187


Similar to these models, my PhD research looks to the first dimension of the CHCm

for answers, addressing complexity by looking at the private and public spaces of

Australian Youtube user-creators and personal cultural memories.

Capturing the cultural record: Youtube in the continuum

My research investigates Youtube as personal mediated memory machine. The

research is from the perspective of the user-creator: the contributor of original

content to the website (not TV clips). This type of content is that which is being

captured and organised in collections such as PANDORA, My Digital Island and the

NFSA.

Personal cultural memory is a concept linked to mediated memories, referring to a

sense of self as creator.48 Together, personal cultural memory and mediated

memories draw upon ideas that are found in the CHCm concerning how interactions

build complexity in multiple times and spaces. Mediated memory is not only about

products or ‘objects’ of technology, but is closely entwined in the structuring

interactions with technology in relation to self and groups over time.

The research project postulates the possibility of how moving image, created and

shared in public and private mediated spaces, can be recorded for a particular time

and place, as well as between self and culture at large.49 How individuals define

themselves through use of media, as well as through particular storytelling mediums,

will contribute knowledge about how context, meaning and authority can be defined

in complex online information systems.

The applications for this research are in curatorial models of practice, whereby users

may contribute to digital archives in online spaces using familiar and popular tools

such as web 2.0 to contribute to a type of joint participation with archivists in creating

context for a collection. Additionally, by looking at roles of technology in cultural

production, a greater understanding of how the emerging models of shared

ownership and authority of personal and community online digital culture will be

tested.

48 van Djick, p. 2

49 van Djick, p. 21


However, more importantly, this research and the CHCm throws light on systems

and structures of cultural production, both at the creator level and the community

level, including institutions. The real potential is in development of powerful and

innovative media tools for self and community expression for personal and shared

community memory-making. These tools will be for individuals, groups, cultural

heritage institutions and future researchers to engage with technologies as system of

cultural production. The tools will provide new models of practice on how to

conceptualise the nature of mediated memory-making as evidence of

culture...evidence of us.50

50 Sue McKemmish, Evidence of me, Archives and Manuscripts 45(3), 1996, pp. 174-187.

Documents

Testing the continuum: user-generated cultural heritage on YouTube